Increase First Time Yield on Your Production Line

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Today’s globalized marketplace is putting more pressure on manufacturers than ever before to cut product costs by making it right, the first time.

Overall production yield is a common metric, but it can be deceiving if parts are reworked or retested. A yield of 98% may sound great, but if 90% of those parts required some amount of re-work the manufacturer may still be operating at a loss.

That’s why the emphasis must be on improving first time yield (FTY), also known as first pass yield (FPY) or first time through (FTT).

Every manufacturer should eliminate rework in favour of improving FTY to achieve the lowest product costs possible.

Better first time yield starts and ends with data

How much does each percentage point off FTY cost my operation each year?

How much could I save if I could proactively monitor station performance and identify bottlenecks before they become critical?

It’s impossible to improve or maintain something that isn’t quantified. Collecting and analyzing the relevant datasets generated by each cycle of a process or test is the first step.

Sciemetric employs modern data analytics and visualization tools to capture and organize this data into a serialized birth history record for each part. Here it is analyzed to quickly determine the “how” and “why” of decreases in FTY/FPY/FTT. This applies to any controlled process on the line – from press fitting, to leak test, rundown, welding and liquid/sealant dispensing.

Let’s talk about how to put your manufacturing data to work to boost FTY/FPY/FTT.

Off-highway OEM boosts first time yield (FTY)

The OEM used Sciemetric’s QualityWorX suite of data management and manufacturing analytics software to overlay and analyze waveforms from a fuel flow consumption hot test. This identified instability in the readings from a third-party data acquisition system. Based on this finding, technicians were able to make adjustments to compensate for this instability. The result was a 5% increase in first time yield and a significant reduction in per engine costs.